BBC investigates Byju’s sales and culture; Jeff Bezos Earth Fund makes more grants; Pinterest buys Vochi; WhatsApp adds auto-delete feature

A BBC investigation based on interviews with former Byju employees and customers has revealed several allegations against India’s most valuable startup, according to a report by the BBC. Byju’s has denied the allegations. Disgruntled parents allege they were misled by sales agents. They said they were lured into contracts by agents who convinced them of an urgent need only to go incommunicado a few months after the sale, making it difficult to get a refund, according to BBC. Former employees complained of "pushy managers", claiming there was a high-pressure sales culture that emphasised aggressive targets. Sales staff have been marked absent and seen their salaries docked for not meeting targets. The aggressive culture has also affected both the physical and mental health of some staff, the report says. There are also hundreds of complaints in online consumer and employee forums against the company, according to BBC. Byju’s has said its products are only sold to parents interested in them, and that it has a strong set of employee welfare policies, according to the BBC report. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said $443 million will be spent on land conservation and restoration and efforts to reduce environmental burdens on marginalised communities via his Earth Fund’s next round of grants, The Verge reports. This year, the fund has pledged more than $3 billion for similar initiatives. In 2020, Bezos promised $10 billion — about 5 percent of his current net worth — towards tackling climate change this decade. The grants include $130 million to advance the Justice40 initiative in the U.S.; $261 million to further the 30x30 initiative to protect 30 percent of land and sea by 2030, with a focus on the Congo Basin and Tropical Andes; and $51 million to support land restoration in the U.S. and Africa, the Earth Fund said in a press release. Pinterest is further investing in creator tools and video. The company has acquired a video creation and editing app Vochi for an undisclosed sum. The company will be bringing in both the IP at Vochi and its 40-person team, including its founders, to expand Pinterest’s set of video creation tools and to help its creators make more dynamic videos, according to TechCrunch. “The Vochi app gives creators the ability to apply high-quality effects based on computer vision on objects in a video instantly,” Ilya Lesun, CEO & Co-founder at Vochi, said in a press release. “These technologies are unique in the industry, and we’re excited to bring them to an even larger audience as a part of the Pinterest team.” WhatsApp is adding new functionality to its disappearing messages feature, which lets users set messages in a chat to automatically be deleted after a set period of time, the company said in a blogpost. WhatsApp says users will now have the option to turn on disappearing messages automatically for all their new one-on-one chats so that all future messages will be automatically deleted from the service. WhatsApp also says it’s giving users more options for how long before a message is deleted. Epic Games has created The Matrix Awakens, an interactive tech demo built in Unreal Engine 5. A teaser for the interactive Matrix experience appeared yesterday, and the tech demo will be available on PS5 and Xbox Series X / S consoles, The Verge reports. You can pre-install the demo right now (29GB) on PS5 or Xbox Series X / S, and it will launch during The Game Awards on December 9th. Members of the original movie team, including Lana Wachowski, have worked with Epic Games to create The Matrix Awakens. The Xbox store listing promises “a wild ride into the reality-bending universe of The Matrix that features performances by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss.”

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Every week day, Forbes India's Hari Arakali, Editor - Tech & Innovation, brings you his take on one piece of tech news that caught his attention, covering everything from big tech to India's growing tech startup ecosystem.